Improvements to mapping and upgrade to SLurl.com

Yes, given that Google doesn't map the planet, they bought 100% of their data from TeleAtlas and other sources. This is why you can't print Google Maps for your friends or use their maps for your party invitations or business flyers without paying megabucks to TeleAtlas, et. al., for licensing.

I believe you meant to say "Anybody else find it kinda funny that OpenStreetMap.org has done a better job at mapping the entire planet in the real world than LL has done at mapping it's own virtual world?" If you asked that question, yeah, you'd be on the money 100%.

Since LL has stated that they already have done months of extensive research and only open these poor forums to us for a month, that they have made up their minds and their plan is in place just waiting to be implemented. Nothing we say in these forums will change their minds. The fact that Adult, Mature and PG areas can coexist in RL on the same continent, region, state and city doesn't seem to register. The fact that every single sim or parts of sims are clearly labeled by content in the top menu bar and in the search results doesn't seem to matter. If someone doesn't want to be there, THEY CAN LEAVE, just like in RL. What goes on inside my prim walls should be as private as it is in RL and should be permitted on the same street as people who do things that I don't do. LL seems to want to cut off the hand because one finger has a hangnail.

In RL, nobody can see through your walls. Now they have better solutions they can apply... eg, http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-205 ... but regardless SL is not like RL.

In Rl we have windows but that doesn't mean it's OK for your neighbor, or anyone else to walk up and look through your windows.

In RL you can't get done for public nudity if you close your curtains, but if you walk around in the nuddy with your curtains open you're likely to get a visit from the Boys in Blue sooner or later.

In SL, your curtains are always open.

Also, in SL there are no real people only avatars and so no there's no such thing as actual nudity. Just drawings of nudity.

In RL, if you have a sexually explicit poster visible to casual passers-by (even casual passers-by who walk up to the corner of the street and peer over your sukebind) you're likely to have problems.

The real difference has nothing to do with whether it's real or imaginary nudity, it's that public places in RL are supposed to be kid-safe, and SL doesn't.

In Sl we don't have to leave our curtains open. PPL looking thru walls do so because of their own perversions. Anyone zooming in to look thru windows, (or walls), at over 50 meters are perverts just as in RL, (with binoculars), and in RL they will be the ones visited by the officers. I agree that if my house is 10 meters from the street or my neighbor's house and I leave the windows open on that side while I practice naked meditation, I deserve to be the one who gets the warning. That should not prevent our happy coexistence on the same street. It's the peeking perverts who need to be contained and not the discrete, nude meditator. Honestly, we already have commonsense laws and TOS that have served well for years.
"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out"
International Standard Version (©200
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell fire.
In my translation, What's the matter with you that you can't keep your eyes off things you consider offensive?

When you rez into a sim prims and textures are rendered in effectively random order. It is also trivially easy and commonplace to accidentally cam through walls. Walls do NOT control what you can see.

I do not personally believe that anyone should be held liable for things like this, neither residents nor Linden Labs. Linden Labs disagrees. They are, moreover, unwilling to provide *real* walls and curtains. Arguing by analogy with real life while depending on features of SL that are not like RL is not useful.

What does matter is that SL is adult-only. So long as that remains true, it doesn't matter whether you can see through walls or not.

If anyone on the development team still reads this thread, can I make a request? Can you change the "NoSuchKey" error message to simply be a blank blue tile? I'm working on something and it cruises along fine on large chunks of mainland. But when I get to the edge and hit a void space things get hairy. It's expecting a "jpg" but gets an xml text message. I can't access .text() of a bitmap container to test for the error. And vice-versa if it were a text field. Void spaces are traditionally just dark blue squares, sure would be nice if those would just appear as such same as anywhere else.

well SL is an expensive place and speaking right now as an owner of four islands contributing close on one thousand us dollars per month.

I regret to say I am now looking else where to allow My lifestyle to flourish without interference.

We harm nobody so hands off the do gooders if not on SL it will be else where.

please be very care full the Lindens there are alternatives springing up and soon they will be as good as SL.

Lochinvar Beck

STI in the Markets of Semris

Bring your own server and join osgrid. Nobody's stopping you.

I'd like to second that request. Anything other than an chunk of XML would be nicer.

With using region map textures in world. I can understand Philip suggesting it is awkward to do. But it should still be done. You could create a new type of asset, that is, an asset with a date/time attached to it. Then just ensure the cache isnt used if the date has expired.

Alternatively, have alias keys which point to the same asset - the asset itself gets replaced and a new key created which points to it, leaving the previous key there so either can then be used to retrieve the same asset. A single asset could amass many keys which point to it. This would avoid having to change the viewer code - it would be none the wiser. This server mod would mean an asset can change over time without taking up a lot of hard disk space (other than 36 chars for the UUID itself each time the asset is changed). Potentially a simple MySQL change, considering it's only private Linden scripts which would be creating/changing the assets and not a feature for content creators?

But that only has so many uses. Better to generalize more and focus on html-per-prim or really just web-graphic-per-prim! - which would mean less work on the server assuming it's to be used as a proxy to avoid revealing user IPs. And it also means less room for exploits. Proxying graphics is safer than rendering full HTML pages, especially if it supports client-side scripting. And also means minimal work for the server too - it passes graphics through unchanged rather than downloading multiple files/graphics from a webserver and actively rendering them. And if kids want to exploit this feature to view adult material anonymously then good luck to them if they prefer to limp around the net with this rather than browse fully via an anonymous proxy like Tor. The region proxy can log who does what - which avatar/script requested the url, so at least it's accountable unlike full anonymous proxies.

Graphics served over the web via a proxy (handled by the sim itself for scalability) has to be the best solution surely? As well as pulling static images we could do some funky stuff with GD/PHP too.

Hey, Philip & James! Still reading??

Any chance places like http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aggro/ will ever work on slurl and/or minimaps?

Check out the pix at http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/10/second-lifes-gr.html. It's a single, isolated region that uses a sleazy-but-cool trick with sculpted megaprims to make it look like there are mountains in the void instead of.. er.. void. Downside is that it really borks up the minimap and slurl..

Lex provided us with the functionality needed using textures already held inworld. A hack maybe but an incredibly useful one and is used in many inworld items. My thanks must go to Lex for making this possible. Unfortunately i will be unable to thank LL for breaking content. We need an alternative if Lex's hard work is to be destroyed.

I believe the HTTP tiles are a viable alternative, even if it's problematic in the immediate short term.

It might take some time for scripters to adapt to the changes, but I seriously doubt this is a real blow to cartography in the long term; there's HTTP facilities in LSL and good LSL scripters tend to be more ingenius than this forum gives them credit for. It's not like other map sites don't regularly change APIs; openstreetmap.org is in read-only mode through 4PM SLT tomorrow because they are currently in the process of changing APIs in a way that is incompatible with the old one.

Scripters can be ingenious but they're still bound by the limitations of the system. If Linden Lab stop updating the tiles on the asset server then someone else has to keep them up to date and make it available to everyone else. That can be very costly.

Not so much a case of ingenuity. More a case of funds. If someone can afford to do it, then yes, not a problem in the long run. But even then you're putting faith in someone (presumably) running a bot to upload the assets on a regular basis and keeping that effort ongoing. If you make tools to sell can you take that gamble?

The ingenuity will be in keeping the amount of uploads to a minimum I suppose. Does anyone know how often map tiles change? (not updated, but actually change visually)? For example for 100 random regions, how many change after 1 week?

And are there decent image diff tools which could be made use of? I think Philip mentioned a decent image diff is one of the complications, so if we can find one for him he won't have any more excuses

Http could certainly be a viable alternative if we had full html-on-a-prim functionality (not just hack via media texture). I do hope LL have the foresight to make this a possibility before Lex's system becomes redundant otherwise many inworld items become redundant too.

A change in api is one thing.. the removal of a complete system without adequate tools to achieve the same result is quite another. Good LSL scripters can indeed be ingenius but even they are unfortunately unable to do the impossible.

There are other (non-sl) grids with better html abilities and we need them here now. Breaking content is never going to be popular.. but to do so without an alternative is surely a backwards step.

Yes, I have several products that depend on the service Lex provides. I was not even aware of this issue until Lex's server was down and I found this forum while I was trying to find out the reason my products were no longer working. Not that I have a huge number of products out, though companies like Hippo and their rental map table probably do, what do I tell my customers when the products no longer work? I suspect there are thousands of products in regular use that take advantage of this service.

Part of the problem is one of automation. I have a product called Region Snap that positions the users camera to snap a picture of a region. So yes, there are ways to get region textures in-world. However, there is a huge difference in usability between having an automated system like Lexs' and having a user manually produce and apply the texture themselves.

I am relatively new to Second Life, so perhaps I don't understand things well enough, but both the Map and Mini-Map viewer interfaces rely on having these textures available. So the textures must be available in-world for these interfaces to function.

I'm glad to see progress on our map. It's already noticeable and well-appreciated.
Here are some ideas for consideration.
There is that old argument that SL is hard to learn about because the world is so big and mutable. New Users supposedly leave SL because they our overwhelmed by the sheer volume space to discover. I thought that would be a reason to stay and involve oneself but hey, I could be wrong. Our real life planet's geography dwarfs SL, yet most of us have a understanding of place and relationships of land masses and seas.
The key to our understanding of our world's geography is our repetitive immersion into place names. The sims are too regularly shaped and too numerous to absorb as geography.
Pleas consider formally naming all Continents and Island chains and publish the names on the SL in-world map. Although I doubt that I will visit Tibet, I have a clear picture of where it is in the world.
Another simple idea is to put an old-style compass in one corner.
A third might be to change the Terrain map so that it shows distances and the gross body names very clearly. I find myself judging place positions from my business because it is my 'home' in SL, even though transport is instantaneous., I'd bet I'm not the only one.
Please consider these ideas, they would be inexpensive to execute and would really add to the SL experience. A side benefit might be residents identification with THEIR place and the way things are done THERE. There are so many districts that have clearly lifestyles and architecture. Why not foster a natural competition? The naming of place might speed this evolution.

Seeing as your talking about updating SL Maps, how about updating the Avitar maps, as a clothing designer i find it really draining when it comes to matching up textures say on a jacket if it has a pattern to it due to the fact that the SL avitar is so poorly mapped out, i would like to know if there are any future plans to remap Avitar body shaps?

Regards

Sgoobzy Sideways

Hello Sgoobzy,
for me it sounds like a completely differen project to make a new map/mini-map, SLurl-frame and a new avatar-mesh with its junction-point, the avatar skeleton and so on.

Even if we all know its a overdue task to upgrade the avi-mesh, we must also realize the big impact on SL, the community and business.
Just think what all Your clients say if non of their so beloved clothes, skins and and and fit from one moment to the next.

Ciao
Dil

Microsoft, one of the biggest web environment providors can do it.. from one program to the next.. XP to 7.... what was.. is no more.. the difference is that SL cannot allow older versions to run.. independent, thats always been the problem with SL it retains authority, and excludes itself in doing so. I sense that will be the undoing of SL, because eventually a competitor will realise the benefits of freedom that SL cannot, or does not provide.

I make no judgement of fault, but time waits for no one, not even SL.

If it doesnt see , someone else will.

[...] Microsoft can spend billions of dollars making sure that 20 year old programs that were broken as written keep running, and Linden Lab can't.